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Thursday, September 12, 2013

My Little Pumpkin

I love knitting little baby hats! They are so super cute (even when they are ugly or dorky looking). Plus, Alexa is nice and lets me try all the hats on her. Having a cute hat model sure does make the projects more fun! I decided that I wanted to make her a couple of holiday hats, starting with a pumpkin hat for Fall and Halloween. I am even toying with the idea of making a jack-o-lantern hat! Well, before I get ahead of myself here is the pumpkin hat...

I started off by buying bright orange yarn for the hat and a light olive green yarn for the stem and leaves. I had watched a couple of YouTube videos and saw how other people made the hats and worked on the leaves. Since I am seriously a beginning knitter I decided to just wing it. I don't know how to read patterns or do any stitches other than knit, purl and a slip stitch, so I went with what I knew and made up my own pattern!

Based on other online baby hat tutorials I knew that I would need to cast on at least 40 stitches, which is the size for a newborn hat. Since Alexa has a bigger head than that I decided to do 50 stitches and see what happened. I also measured her head (16") and knew that I would need to knit at least 8" of knitting so the hat would be big enough. (I'm pretty sure all of you knitters out there are dying from my lack of knitter's speak...sorry!) It took me about three days to finish the hat, about six hours total knitting time.

No pumpkin hat is complete without a stem and a leaf! At first I just made one leaf, but I thought it looked pretty dumb...

A friend suggested that I just add a second leaf and TADA! Super cute pumpkin hat!

Hat Pattern:
Cast on 50 stitches of orange yarn
1. Knit 1 row
2. Knit 2, Slip 2 for one row
3. Knit 1 row
4. Knit 2, Slip 2 for one row
5. Knit 2 rows
Repeat steps 2-5 until you have 8 inches of knit material
Cast off
Fold your rectangle in half the short way and sew the left side and right side closed, you are left with one side open
Turn your material inside out - Tada! You made a hat!

Leaf Pattern: (I made 2 leaves)
Cast on 7 stitches of green yarn
Knit 4 rows
Knit two stitches together and then finish knitting that row (you now have 6 stitches)
Knit 3 rows
Knit two stitches together and then finish knitting that row (you now have 5 stitches)
Knit 2 rows
Knit two stitches together and then finish knitting that row (you now have 4 stitches)
Knit 2 rows
Knit two stitches together and then finish knitting that row (you now have 3 stitches)
Knit 2 rows
Cast off

I sewed the leaves onto the hat using the tail of yarn from when I casted on and the tail from casting off.

Stem:
Cast on 5 or 6 stitches and knit until you have about 2 1/2" of material. Fold in half the long way and sew the open sides. Sew onto the hat on a short side.